Richard Cohen: Republicans adrift

4:27 PM,
Dec. 31, 2012

Written by

Richard Cohen

On Nov. 11, a mere five days after the presidential election, the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam pushed off from Fort Lauderdale for a Caribbean jaunt. Aboard were nearly 600 emotionally tattered Republicans, most of whom had been expecting a Republican victory of Rovian proportions - surely they had all read Karl's prediction in The Wall Street Journal - and now were about to cruise 750 miles to nowhere, just like the party they so adored. The Nieuw Amsterdam was 86,000 tons of painful metaphor.

The cruise was sponsored by National Review, the magazine founded by William F. Buckley and for years ...